A lot of people have a dual OS setup running on their computers. What happens when one OS makes it so you can’t boot into the other? A bug Red Hats Fedora Core 2 OS did exactly that, but only when Windows was the other OS. It’s worth noting that some manual hard drive reconfigurations have fixed the problem.
Red Hat's newest hobbyist and developer version of Linux, Fedora Core 2, caused trouble for some who found they couldn't start Windows after installing the Linux upgrade side by side with it.
The bug had cropped up in testing, but after Red Hat released Fedora Core 2 in May, many more users reported their systems no longer would boot Windows. No data on the Windows side was destroyed, and some manual hard drive reconfiguration fixed the problem.
"We do not think this is a severe problem," said Red Hat programmer Cristian Gafton in an e-mail interview, because information isn't destroyed, the problem is repairable, and "a very small fraction of systems are affected." However, he added, "We recognize that it is an annoying issue for the users that are affected by it and we are working on publishing a fix that will address it."
News source: C|Net News.com
Red Hat's newest hobbyist and developer version of Linux, Fedora Core 2, caused trouble for some who found they couldn't start Windows after installing the Linux upgrade side by side with it.
The bug had cropped up in testing, but after Red Hat released Fedora Core 2 in May, many more users reported their systems no longer would boot Windows. No data on the Windows side was destroyed, and some manual hard drive reconfiguration fixed the problem.
"We do not think this is a severe problem," said Red Hat programmer Cristian Gafton in an e-mail interview, because information isn't destroyed, the problem is repairable, and "a very small fraction of systems are affected." However, he added, "We recognize that it is an annoying issue for the users that are affected by it and we are working on publishing a fix that will address it."
News source: C|Net News.com
Neowin would like to add that [we hope] this is in no way representative of other tory candidates.
A fix is readily available and relatively easy to implement...
instructions here
I also must note... after 8 or so dual boot installs of core 2 I only ran into this problem on ONE machine... I found this fix and it worked like a charm... no loss of data and everything works fine...
I am sure a patch will be available soon so you dont have to go thru the riga-ma-roll listed in the current fix...
ALSO I am by NO means a LINUX geek, I am novice at best so even though it looks complicated if you read the instructions and type everything correctly it is pretty easy to patch.
Last edited by 20937 on 09 Jun 2004 - 14:54
So from what i can tell, this is standard proceedure for OS's.
$0.02
Only problem WE are the victims!
Actually, you didn't.
You just couldn't boot up Windows.
This is a severe problem. I'm sure a lot of users did think they lost all their data. Also, if you try to use the windows install cd to reinstall windows it can't fix the boot record. Now, that is microsofts fault because it should be able to install on any hard drive that the owner is willing to do a complete format on. But to get it reinstalled i had to use a disk wipper program prior to installing windows.
Seriously, this is old news. How could this bug get in a final release is what really scares me. The fix is simple and quick though.
I've heard it's a problem in kernel 2.6, not fedora. And I'm on Debian Unstable with 2.6 installed, and WinXP is fine, but that's on FAT32.
Needless to say, I wasn't happy with FC2 and installed Gentoo 2004.1 pretty quickly after that...
That's a typical Microsoft response! I wonder when Cristian Gafton ever worked for MS!
But Red Hat disables booting into the more useful OS and nothing but excuses (the patch is here, so it's nothing). HA - once again a demonstration of how two faced and double standard are the linvocates.
Ohh please, go get a life. It's a bug, bugs appear all the time, even in your lovely Windows...
FYI - if you install XP on a machine with Linux OR Win XP installed on another partition once XP has finished installing you can no longer see your first partition, you then have to get another utility for Win XP to help you setup your partitions correctly. (this is just a brief overview it's actually a little more convoluted than this), why? because MS see's fit to overwrite the MBR on Every XP install! funny seeing as Linux (99% of the time) reads the MBR at install and gives access to all previous partitions, thus allowing for Dual boot right out of the box!, Why doesn't your precious MS exhibit this same behavior?
Exactly, you usually have the choice of where you'd like to put the bootloader too letalone which OSes you'd like to boot from!
Let's hope that Linus and the rest of the kernel dev team fix this in 2.6.7, if it is a kernel side problem.
Windows doesn't properly identify the geometry of the hard drive - never has, and don't unless you can use a "Dynamic" disk (Server-grade OS only for MS). I could go on and on about this problem - I've made my own workaround as many of the 'available' ones don't work for my system (IBM R50), but it's as much the fault of the BIOS in the system as it is MS or anyone elses'. Some assumptions were made when they designed the 2.6 kernel, which might not have been such a good idea... the problem has since been fixed, but Fedora Core 2 doesn't use this updated version of the kernel.
Using LBA is A Bad Way (TM) of doing things and should die. However, since different folks do different things different ways, you're often going to find issues like this as you intertwine two completely different machines.
By the by, this same thing has happened in the past with Windows NT4/2000 - with the same OS to blame - XP.
Commenting has either been disabled on this article or you are not logged in. Click here to login or register, its free!
Note: Anonymous commenting is disabled in order to keep the quality of responses to a high standard.